it that the Apostle says, 'Though I want to go I am bound to stay?'
and why is it that the Master says, 'It is for your good that I am
going,' but because of the essential difference in the relation of
the two to the people who are to be left, and in the continuance of
the work of the two after they had departed? Paul knew that when he
went, whatever befell those whom he loved and would fain help, he
could not stretch a hand to do anything for them. He knew that death
dropped the portcullis between him and them, and, whatever their sore
need on the one side of the iron gate, he on the other could not
succour or save. Jesus Christ said, 'It is better for you that I
should go,' because He knew that all His influences would flow
through the grated door unchecked, and that, departed, He would still
be the life of them that trusted in Him; and, having left them, would
come near them, by the very act of leaving them.

And so there is here indicated for us--as we shall have occasion to
see more fully, presently,--in that one singular and anomalous fact
of Christ's departure being a positive gain to those that trust in
Him, the singularity and uniqueness of His work for them and His
relation to them.

The words mean a great deal more than the analogies of our relation
to dear ones or great ones, loves or teachers, who have departed,
might suggest. Of course we all know that it is quite true that death
reveals to the heart the sweetness and the preciousness of the
departed ones, and that its refining touch manifests to our blind
eyes what we did not see so clearly when they were beside us. We all
know that it needs distance to measure men, and the dropping away of
the commonplace and the familiar ere we can see 'the likeness' of our
contemporaries 'to the great of old.' We have to travel across the